Hello,
I have been commissioned by "Nature Biotechnology" to write a short piece
on the current use of software for drug design in the pharmaceutical
industry. I will not be reviewing any specific programs or tools; my
intention is more to talk generally about the types of software that is
around and how useful it is for the particular tasks of a structure-based
drug design team working in industry: specifically, target identification,
homology modelling, ligand design and optimisation. I would like to
represent the views of people working in companies ranging from the mega-
multinationals to startup biotechs and I am particularly interested to
hear from those based outside the UK.
I would be very grateful if any of you were prepared to help me with this
research. This would be likely to involve either a fairly short phone
call or answering an email questionnaire. If you are able to help, please
email me at the address below (which is *not* the address this is posted
from). The deadline for the article is mid-August; many apologies for the
shortness of notice.
A word of advance warning: two more articles in this series are planned
for later this year. These will be on, firstly, bioinformatics software
and, secondly, the programs and tools used in taking a compound through
pre-clinical development, clinical trials and registration. I would also
be interested to know if any of you would be able to comment on the first
of these, or to suggest people I could contact for the second.
To fill in a little background, I am an experienced researcher in
structural biology and molecular simulation, now working part time as a
consultant and science writer specialising in this area.
Thank you very much in advance.
Best regards,
Dr. Clare Sansom
c.sansom at mail.cryst.bbk.ac.uk
Honorary Teaching Fellow, Birkbeck College, London, UK
Associate Consultant, Venus Internet Ltd., London, UK